In mid July 1996 Ron Walker and Brad Harness met to discuss the need for a Historical Society in the Village, and discussed what we would need to do to get it started. We decided that it would be a good idea to put together a display for Gala Days, a local festival, including a sign up sheet, so people in the Village could indicate their interest in a Historical Society.
In the meantime the former Trinity Anglican Church came up for sale. We decided that if there would be a Historical Society then we needed a home for it, and this was the perfect place to locate the Society and museum. Through back and forth offers and discussions, we ended up with a purchase price of $55,000 and had an accepted offer. When we put in the offer, there were no funds in our treasury and one individual in our group put up the $100 deposit. The next big question was how will we raise this money by the closing date?
Before coming up with the funds to purchase this building we needed to actually form this historical society.
The initial meeting of the Ailsa Craig & District Historical Society was held on Aug 8, 1996 at Ron Wlaker's home with 12 people present. We decided on a name, set a slate of officers, made a statement of purpose and filler out the necessary documentation to register as a charity. That evening we also received confirmation that our offer had been accepted and on Sept 15 we would close the deal and have a home of our own! A lot of accomplishments, considering two weeks earlier this project was only a dream!
In the next few weeks we campaigned many resources to see if we could come up with the necessary funds. It became more and more evident that we were going to have to look for funds from public sources, until such time as we would receive our charitable number and be able to give tax receipts. Although many people did have enough faith in us to give us money, we decided to approach the local branch of the CIBC to help arrange funding.
They agreed to fund us with certain stipulations, one of which was to get guarantors for our loan. We found four people that were willing to take the risk and believed in us enough to offer this kind of support.
Two days prior to finalizing the purchase of the building we received our charitable designation, and since have incorporated.
We planned and held our first open house on Oct. 5, 1996, and had a good display of artifacts and information, as well as a bake sale. The response from the public was phenomenal as we had about 145 people through and raised around $2700 that day from the bake sale and donations!
We hold our meetings on the fourth Tuesday of each month at 7:30 pm and regularly have around 25-30 members in attendance. Our membership is at about 86 and continues to grow! The members receive quarterly newsletters.
We acquired our second building, in 2001, to convert a former Baptist Church into a Museum Gallery and interpretive centre, as well as storage!
The first building is used as a non-denominational chapel and research room.
The overall support for this project has grown in leaps and bounds and we can see that preserving our heritage is as important to the larger community as it is to us.
Our various fund-raising activities consist of, an annual Antique Auction and Dinner, with donated articles from local businesses and individuals, a Native Re-enactment and Heritage weekend in June as well as running a tea room for a local Quilt shop that puts on an international quilt show, last year quilts from East Africa were featured. We have the usual bake sale and raffles as well. We rely heavily as well on our memberships and private donations.
We have a yearly Christmas Eve service, and have the Chapel available for weddings and other non-denominational religious events.
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